My Bones Will Keep

‘Oh, hardly that! Apart from Aberdeen and Glasgow, where else would a business man go but to Edinburgh and Inverness?’

‘I could tell you of quite a number of other places he might go to,’ retorted Laura; but she was prevented by Dame Beatrice from embarking upon this recital, for, before she could even mention Perth or any of the prosperous towns and cities of the Lowlands, Dame Beatrice again took the floor.

‘We have established, then, that you knew of a plan to murder the laird of Tannasgan,’ she said, taking out a notebook and pencil. Off his guard, Grant gaped at her like a stranded fish and then began to stutter.

‘Articulate clearly,’ said Laura. ‘You can’t have it both ways. Either I can give you an alibi for the time the piping stopped—in which case you knew the murder had just been committed, ergo you knew it had been planned—or I can’t. See what I mean? If the murder was committed while we were together in that boat, you didn’t do it, but if it was committed at any time when we were not together – well, you can’t come to me for an alibi, can you, however innocent you may be?’

‘I think, Mr Grant,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that your best plan will be to tell us all you know.’

‘I can’t!’ said the young man abruptly.

‘You mean that the truth may involve your relatives, the Corries?’

‘I don’t know whom it would involve. I did not know the laird was to be murdered, or that the piping had anything to do with it. I found out afterwards – but I can’t let you know how.’

‘But, listen,’ Laura urged him. ‘If you knew nothing of what was to happen, why did you ask me in that wild sort of way how I knew a doctor might be needed? And why did you say, when the piping stopped, that that … whatever that was… was all over?’

The young man stared at her, then he smiled.

‘I knew there was something I’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘If you knew a doctor was needed, you knew, at that time, more about the murder than I did! What do you say to that? By God…’ he stood up and faced her… ‘if you can queer my pitch, so can I queer yours! We stand or fall together, Mrs Gavin! What about it? You had better think it over. My position on Tannasgan was more regular than yours, you know!’

He climbed to the courtyard of the hotel, shouted to the men in the ferryboat and in a short while Laura and Dame Beatrice saw him manhandling a motor-cycle down the steep, precarious steps to the little quay. Several times it looked as though he might lose his footing, but he recovered it and the men received the motor-cycle over the side of the boat and stowed it away.

The young man returned to the hotel for a small suitcase not much larger than a big attache-case, descended the steps again and, this time, went on board. The boat backed away, then turned and sputtered across the loch to a long wooden landing-stage on the opposite side. Here the motor-cycle was unshipped, the small case strapped on to the luggage carrier and the whole equipage was bundled along the landing-stage and, not without effort, thrust up the bank and on to the road. The last the watchers saw was that it turned to the right at the top of the bank and took the lock-side road for Ardlui.

‘Thankful to see the back of him,’ said Laura. ‘Are you going to climb all those steps with me to look at the Falls of Arklet? Funny I should have mentioned going for a doctor as my reason for getting away from Tannasgan. Do you think he will blow his top and accuse me of knowing something about the murder?’

‘I will climb with you and admire Mr Wordsworth’s falls,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘As to the rest – well, we shall see.’

‘I shan’t lose sleep, at any rate,’ said Laura. ‘Besides, there’s always stout denial, an excellent and impregnable defence so long as one sticks to it. And there weren’t any witnesses, you know.’

Dame Beatrice rose and they climbed to the courtyard and crossed it to the foot of the steps which had been made beside the lashing, tumbling water. Dame Beatrice measured the ascent with her eye.

‘We have a long way to go,’ she said; but whether she referred to the climb up the rude stone steps beside the noisy and beautiful stream, or to the fact that the case of the stabbed laird of Tannasgan was only in its infancy, Laura did not enquire.

Chapter 7

Auld Acquaintance

‘They were great friends in a quarter

of an hour: and great friends they remained.’

M. R. James

« ^ »

AS she had come by way of Rannoch and Glencoe, Laura had expressed a wish to return to Tigh-Osda and Garadh by the longer route out to Oban and so, by the coast road, to Ballachulish and back to Fort William. She kept a sharp look-out as the car took its dignified route through Dalmally on the way to Loch Awe and the Pass of Brander, but there was no sign of her motor-cycling boatman.

The evening and night which they spent at Fort William passed without incident and in the morning Laura elected to join a small party, led by a local guide, which was to climb Ben Nevis. She had made the ascent once before, but by the easier route from Achintee Farm by pony-track and the long, rough, zigzag paths to the summit. This time the party was to use these paths for the descent, but climbed the huge, ugly mass by the tougher way up which followed the Allt-a-Mhuilinn to the club-hut at the head of the glen and then by a trackless route along the side of the mountain and then onwards and upwards between Cair Mor Dearg and the summit.

Visibility at the top was particularly good that day. The beautiful peak of Schiehallion stood out to the south- east, distinguishable from the three Bens—Mor, Vorlich and Lawers – by its remarkable symmetry and pointed cone.